One of the pleasant side effects of technology is that, more and more, you do not have to work where you work anymore. Communication through IM, email and video conferencing make connecting with colleagues simple and convenient. Corporate network systems make it a breeze to ‘plug in’ to the office from anywhere. Need to stay at home to let the plumber in? No problem. Want to head home after lunch to pick up the kids from school? No longer an issue. Accept a programming job in Tulsa but want to live in Tampa. Yes you can!

Over 2.5% of the workforce in the United States operates remotely and that figure is climbing steadily. This past December, job search engine Indeed.com - visited by 180 million users every month - discovered that a growing number of people were searching for remote or telecommuting jobs. They looked at the numbers and found that job-hunters in the cities below, more than any others, were more inclined to search for positions that would allow them to work remotely.

Workers and companies, more and more, are discovering the convenience of using technology to work remotely. Job-hunters in these 20 cities are more hungry for remote jobs than any others. (image credit: Eduardo Otubo on Flickr)

In order, here are the top 20 cities people want to be, even if their job is elsewhere:

Atlanta, GA

Austin, TX

Tampa, FL

Seattle, WAS

San Diego, CA

Charlotte, NC

Orlando, FL

Denver, CO

Phoenix, AZ

San Jose, CA

Dallas, TX

Miami, FL

San Francisco, CA

Washington, DC

Minneapolis, MN

Las Vegas, NV

New York, NY

Philadelphia, PA

San Antonio, TX

Chicago, IL

There’s no doubt that the cities on Indeed’s list are large metropolitan areas that have a lot to offer in terms of culture and opportunity. That might explain why folks would rather work remotely there than move away to follow a job, says Indeed.com Senior Vice President Paul D'Arcy. “We find that there are people who choose where they want to work first and then the job second and many of those are these sorts of cities… these are all hot cities—fast-growing, in-demand places that people are flocking to.”

The team at Indeed tried to disprove their ‘hot city’ theory, but couldn’t find another explanation for the desire for remote work in these metropolis. “We wondered at first if these are places with bad traffic, with people trying to get off the road,” D’Arcy said. “Actually, it doesn’t look like that at all.”

The bigger picture seems to show that remote jobs are more and more in demand, says D’Arcy. “Searches for remote and flexible work have been some of the fastest-growing searches that we’ve seen,” he said. Some of that could be a product of supply seeking demand, in that companies are taking advantage of the fact that technology makes it possible to have employees spread out over a wider geographic region, plugged into the company network from afar, and seeking employees agreeable to such an arrangement.

According to D’Arcy, more workers are fine with that. “We did a survey on what would get people to take a new job and 91% of people said that there was something that would get them (to take a new job). Twenty-nine percent of those people said that the ability to work remotely would be a key thing that would attract them to a new job.”

But those looking for remote work tend to fall into a certain category: highly skilled professionals, largely in corporate fields where technology can be used to connect a workforce and tasks are not face-to-face or directly hands-on. That seems to makes sense: you can’t be a remote cook.